Fred H. Kiser, an accomplished mountaineer and promoter, was one of the most successful and widely known landscape and commercial photographers in the American West during the first two decades of the early 20th century. His work is credited with popularizing Crater Lake National Park and the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and establishing Glacier National Park in Montana. He and his brother Oscar also operated the Lewis and Clark Official Photographic Co. at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition held Portland, Oregon. After Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as the Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in Portland before moving to Los Angeles to spend the last years of his life.

Louis W. Hill, President of the Great Northern Railway Company, realizing that the creation of a national park at Glacier would greatly benefit his railway company, lobbied Montana’s Senator Thomas Carter, urging congressional action. In 1910 after President Taft signed the bill to establish Glacier National Park as the United State’s 10th national park, Hill commissioned nine chalets and tent camps to be built in the national park. A subsidiary company of the great Northern Railway, The Glacier Park Hotel Company, was created and operated as a concessionaire of the National Park Service to attract tourists to the newly created park. Tourists arrived in Glacier on the Great Northern's passenger trains, which stopped at stations adjacent to Hill's hotels. As a publicity stunt the Great Northern Railway and the Glacier Park Hotel Company wanted to emphasize the Blackfoot relationship to the mountains. In 1895 the entire eastern half of Glacier Park had been purchased by the Federal Government from the Blackfoot tribe. A group of the Blackfoot Tribe, (what came to be called the "Glacier Park Indians") were put into the newly created park as a dominant presence and a major tourist attraction. Tepees were planted next to park hotels, and Native Americans dressed in war bonnets greeted visitors to the park.

Beginning about 1909, Kiser contracted with the Great Northern Railway to photograph the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern's tourist facilities for many years.